The argument question you are looking for is “does irrigation increase water supply through evaporation and rainfall?”
Of course the atoms are conserved. Any plant matter that is consumed by humans or burned will end up back as water while it isn’t tied up in your body or buried.
Certainly some will go to groundwater and some will evaporate and get locally precipitated... but depending on weather patterns some water vapor will leave the state and rain down past the mountains or into the sea.
A large ecological transformation could be undertaken to plant forests and other plants to increase water capacity and make more water cycle locally, but that kind of transformation would be terrificly expensive and environmentally controversial. (but could work in places... there are a lot of rainforests out there where if you burned them down they would be deserts.)
Of course the atoms are conserved. Any plant matter that is consumed by humans or burned will end up back as water while it isn’t tied up in your body or buried.
Certainly some will go to groundwater and some will evaporate and get locally precipitated... but depending on weather patterns some water vapor will leave the state and rain down past the mountains or into the sea.
A large ecological transformation could be undertaken to plant forests and other plants to increase water capacity and make more water cycle locally, but that kind of transformation would be terrificly expensive and environmentally controversial. (but could work in places... there are a lot of rainforests out there where if you burned them down they would be deserts.)